


Shaking the Wings (of Their Terrible Youths)

by FreshBrains



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Liam, Alpha Scott McCall, Anal Sex, Character Development, Difficult Decisions, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Heartbreak, M/M, POV Liam, Past Relationship(s), Post-Season/Series 04, Punk, Reunions, Starting Over, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:33:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2546024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam takes the bus all the way to Florida</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shaking the Wings (of Their Terrible Youths)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kendall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendall/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy, Kendall! I had a lot of fun writing this. <3

“So,” Brett says, leaning against the front window of the tattoo parlor.  “I heard you were an alpha now.”

“Not really,” Liam answers, cringing as his lungs fill with smoke.  He hates smoking almost as much as he hates drinking—it’s all just bitter and tasteless when it doesn’t make them actually _feel_ anything.  But Brett smokes and Liam still has a soft spot for Brett on good days, so he tolerates the tar-taste.  “I mean, technically.  But you know how I feel about that shit.”

“It’s not something you can feel, Liam.  It just _is_.”  Brett’s grown into the adult Liam hopes he’ll never become—button-up shirt, cuffed jeans, those stupid trendy deck shoes all rich dudes in town wear on weekends.  He’s got two kids now, a partner.  He still looks twenty-one.  Liam loves him and hates him.  “Satomi wants you to start a pack soon if you’re going to stick around.  She’s not the territorial type, but after your pack—”

“This is my home,” Liam says, cutting Brett off.  His voice comes out small, meek.  _You’re not a fucking kid anymore,_ he thinks, wishing he could just lash out, let his eyes glow red, fucking tear someone apart.  “Of course I’m sticking around.  What does she want me to do?”  Liam thinks about the alpha who tried to break into his apartment two months beforehand, some skinny kid, probably some born-alpha who wanted to get back at mommy and daddy.  He was too easy to kill.

“She wants you to grow the fuck up,” Brett says, flicking his cigarette onto the ground and crushing it with his obnoxious shoe. 

*

Liam can feel the change.  He wakes up every morning in his shitty one-bedroom and feels like a new man, like he’s got new blood singing through his veins, and he feels _young_ in the best way—not shy or unsure or pissed off, just strong, good.  He does push-ups on the bedroom floor, pull-ups on the bar hung in the bathroom doorframe.  He eats a raw steak for breakfast and immediately wants to puke but doesn’t.

His phone sits on the countertop, uncharged and unplugged, rarely used.  Brett knows where he lives and Mason lives with him and they’re the only two he gives a shit about anymore.  The folks are long gone, sick of the secrets and lies, probably heartbroken.  Liam doesn’t really like to think about them. 

“You need to go visit him,” Mason says, sitting on the counter drinking from a carton of expired orange juice mixed with UV.  He’s wearing one of Liam’s old tank tops, off-white and ratty around the collar, but his tattoos look amazing beneath the fabric—all ink-black lines and swirls, stark and elegant against his brown skin.  Liam did them all for him.  Neither of them are super-talented at tattooing but they like it, it keeps them connected.

“Fuck off,” Liam answers, still breathing heavily from his hundred pull-ups.  “I don’t _need_ to do anything.”

“You sound like an asshole,” Mason says, and he’s always right about these things.  “This isn’t a friendship thing.  _We’re_ a friendship thing,” he says, motioning between them, which gets Liam to smile a little.  “It’s a werewolf thing.  And you’re head werewolf now.  That’s sort of scary.”

Liam exhales deeply, something he still retains from all his years of therapy, something not even the wolf pulled out of him.  “Yeah, okay.  But Florida?”

Mason shrugs.  “Could be worse.  Could be Missouri.”

“I guess,” Liam says, and wonders how many days he can be away from the tattoo parlor before his regulars ask about him.

*

After the pack left, Scott called Liam every day.  Liam never answered.

The calls trickled down to texts, then e-mails, then postcards once a month.  Liam never answered, so Scott stopped sending things.

Liam pretends not to have every message saved in a safe space, but he knows they’ll come in handy one day, for some reason or another.

*

Liam takes the bus all the way to Florida.  He never got his license; doesn’t really want it.  He begs Mason to go with him half a dozen times but one of them needs to stay at the parlor.

There’s a little girl on the bus with her mother.  Liam can tell she’s a kitsune right away, he could never forget eyes like that, all gold and bright and magnetic.  She leans over her seat and pokes at Liam until Liam removes his headphones, the muffled noise of Sonic Youth filtering into the stale bus air.

“Where’s your pack?”  Her voice is soft, metallic.  It makes Liam’s chest ache.

“I don’t have one anymore,” he answers honestly, glancing at the girl’s mother.  She might be a kitsune too, but if she is, she’s advanced.  Liam can’t scent it on her.  She gives him a shy smile, rubbing her daughter’s back like they’re not on a bus full of humans who could be listening.

“That’s sad,” the girl says, frowning.  She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a half-empty bag of M&M’s.  “Want a green one?  It matches your hair.”

Liam smiles, accepting the candy.  Little kids love his hair and ink and piercings; they’re never afraid of them.  “What’s your name?”

“Junko,” the girl says, sucking on a red M&M. 

“Be safe, Junko,” he says, pulling his headphones back on.  “Be strong.”

*

Florida is too hot and too loud and Liam hates it instantly.  He barely registers the world around him.  If he did, he’d get overwhelmed and lash out, and the worst place to give himself away is far from home.

Mason contacted an old friend of the pack he used to date in high school, Danny.  Apparently, he was good at tracking people down.  He got Mason the pack’s current addresses, right down to the apartment number, and Liam holds the damp, crumpled paper in his hand as he walks down the sidewalk of a tiny, ocean-side resort town with way too many gift shops and not enough bars.

“Hey, where can I find this street?” He stops at a group of twenty-something guys, all dressed in snapbacks and tattered jeans and stick-and-poke tattoos, Liam’s kind of guys. 

One guy leans over and looks at the paper.  He points down near the beach and nods, giving Liam what he needs without saying a word.  Liam nods in thanks and makes his way down the boardwalk, sand already filtering through his ratty running shoes, his pack heavy on his shoulders.

He doesn’t have time to prepare to see him again.  One minute Liam’s walking next to the grimy beach, the sun hot on his hair, sweaty and anxious, and the next minute Scott McCall is standing at the end of the boardwalk in cut-offs and no shirt, smelling of exquisite sadness.

*

Liam wants to run but doesn’t know in which direction.  The scent coming off Scott is painful, like Scott had been suppressing his emotions for years and all of a sudden let them spill out like the froth coming off the sea.  Liam’s eyesight is good but not perfect, they’re still a few dozen yards apart, but Liam can still _see_ him like they never left each other’s sight.

Scott begins to walk, bare feet thumping against the damp wood of the boardwalk.  Liam doesn’t move.

 _He smells the alpha in me,_ he thinks, heart hammering.  _God, he can smell the change._

“Liam?”  Scott is inches away in half a second, his face clear as crystal, and Liam wants to shut his eyes.  “When?”

Liam inhales deeply through his nose and nearly flinches at Scott’s scent, it has his prick half-hard before he can even catalogue the nostalgia—grass, sweet smoke, ink, cinnamon, wind.  The thick cloud of Scott pools in his groin like he’s fifteen again.  “Today.  Just got off the bus.”

Scott isn’t a day older than when Liam saw him last but he looks like he’s lived a million years.  His skin is a bit darker from the sun, his hair shorter, his arms bound in muscle and ink.  There’s an onyx ring in his lower lip on the left side.  One thing Liam notices is the hair—he’s got hair on his chest and arms, trailing down below the waistband of his cut-offs, grazing the sides of his face.  It’s the only way Liam can tell it’s been years.

Scott has never looked more like an alpha.

Scott reaches out to touch Liam, just his hand grazing Liam’s bicep, but Liam flinches away like Scott has wolfsbane on his skin.  “I’m an alpha now,” he blurts, like Scott can’t tell.

“I know,” Scott says, soft and gentle, and Liam can finally tell what that smell is underneath the layers of salt and first kisses. 

*

Liam sits in Scott’s apartment by the beach and misses his own place hidden in the wooded pockets of Beacon Hills.  “Have you lived here long?”

Scott shakes his head, opening the fridge.  He pulls out two glass bottles of Coke and tosses one to Liam without a second glance; Liam catches it easily.  “A year or so.  Stiles and Kira got a place closer to the city, but Derek and I like it here.”  There’s no sadness in that.  Liam can smell Stiles and Kira all over the apartment under Derek’s stronger scent; they must visit often.  It makes Liam feel a little calmer. 

The apartment is utilitarian but quintessentially Scott.  The living room is empty save for a TV hooked up to an Xbox next to a fraying secondhand sofa.  The kitchen counter is covered in paperback books, all with varying bookmarks and bent pages, and Liam suspects Scott is an editor or reviewer of some kind.  It makes him oddly proud.  He can see Scott’s bedroom down the hall, the door open a crack.

Scott clenches his jaw as he sits on the battered sofa, hands hanging down between his legs.  “Liam, what happened?”

Liam shrugs, still looking at Scott’s face, the kindness in it, the patience.  Before he can think, he reaches out and rubs his thumb against Scott’s lip piercing.  “I like this.”  He’s got his own—two on the bottom lip, three in each ear.  But they look better on Scott.

Scott closes his eyes like he’s praying.  He grasps Liam’s hand, twining their fingers together, and this time Liam doesn’t flinch.  “I’ve missed you.  A lot.”

“I killed someone,” Liam says, inching closer to Scott on the sofa.  It’s like they’ve never been apart, their scents mix exquisitely in the salty ocean air filtering through the open patio door.  “I’m not like you.  I killed an alpha who tried to hurt me and now I’m an alpha and _god,_ I don’t know how the fuck you handled this.”

Scott swallows hard.  “I was just a kid.”  His throat bobs beneath a detailed tattoo on his throat, a heart with a pin in it rather than an arrow.  Liam wants to ask what it means. 

Instead, he cups Scott’s face in his sweaty hands and looks up at him, eyes hooded.  “Take me to bed.  We’ll talk later.”

*

Sex with Scott is no mystery to Liam—after all, he lost his virginity to Scott when he was fifteen.  He lost a lot of things to Scott.  He regrets very few of them.

“God,” Scott says, his hands strong as he pulls Liam into his lap, thrusting into him with short, fluid strokes.  His golden shoulders glisten with sweat.  “I honestly never thought we’d be here again.”

Liam can’t remember the last time he felt that safe, that warm and pleasantly overwhelmed in someone’s arms.  He hasn’t had sex in a while and it burns a little, makes him ache, and it’s the best decision.  He winds his arms around Scott’s neck, clinging to him.  “Harder,” he gasps, even though he likes the slowness of it, the casual burn.  He just wants Scott to know he can take it, he always could.

“No,” Scott says, gruff and smooth and full of authority, and Liam whines into his throat in submission.  It feels good to submit again.  For the hundredth time in the last month, Liam hates being an alpha.  Scott takes hold of Liam’s hips in his big hands and angles his body; Liam writhes, mouth open in a silent scream as Scott nails his prostate.

“Why?” It comes out as half a gasp, half a sob.  Liam buries his face in Scott’s neck, letting Scott’s sideburns rasp against his cheek.  “Why would you leave me like that?”  He means _how,_ how could Scott leave, but it doesn’t come out that way.  Nothing is coming out the way he wants it to.

“I was just a kid,” Scott whispers again, thrusting harder, spilling Liam onto the bed and bearing down on him.  He looks at home above Liam, his eyes dark and mournful.  He looks down on Liam like Liam’s made of glass and concrete at the same time.

 _We were both just kids,_ Liam thinks as he comes, legs wrapped tight around Scott’s waist.  It’s a good excuse, but it still leaves Liam feeling raw.

*

“Do you want to stay here?” Scott rolls over, limbs all twisted around in the blue sheets.  “With me?”

Liam shakes his head, curling up next to Scott.  It’s a question he knew he’d hear and already knew the answer to.  “I can’t.  I need to stay in Beacon Hills.”  He presses his palm against Scott’s chest, his fingers running through the fine hair, and he can feel himself twitch again under the sheets.

Scott nods, not hurt.  “Do you still want an answer?”

Lia shrugs, pressing alongside Scott, nosing at the hollow of his collarbone.  “Do you have one?”

Scott makes a low growling nose in his throat and pulls Liam up into his lap.  He’s hard again, too.  “Nothing ended up how I thought it would end up.  When I left—when _we_ left—I thought things would get better.” 

“Did they?” Liam sets his hips in a slow writhe, teasing Scott.

“In some ways,” Scott says, leaning up.  He wraps his arms around Liam’s waist, pulling them flush together.  “But God, I really missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Liam whispers, slow and careful like he’s been practicing the words for a long time.

By the end of the day, Liam realizes Scott never asked about the unanswered calls and letters.  He loves him for it, more than he ever thought he could.

*

“Call me when you get back,” Scott says, cupping the back of Liam’s neck, fingers playing the baby hairs.  “Please?”

Liam nods, leaning up to press a kiss to Scott’s piercing.  “I promise.”

“And choose carefully,” Scott says, looking down like he’s not sure of his advice.  “Derek wasn’t so careful when he made a pack.  I know you’ll do better.”  Liam never saw Derek at the apartment, but then again he and Scott spent every second of the last three days in bed, talking and smoking and making promises they knew they would keep.

Liam nods again.  “My pack is your pack.  Visit Beacon Hills soon.”

Scott pulls Liam in close, surrounding him with his scent.  “Be strong.”  The bus pulls up to a stop, roaring its welcome in a puff of black exhaust.

Liam squeezes his eyes shut.  “I promise.”

*

When Liam gets back to Beacon Hills, he deletes every message Scott left him, burns every letter.  He doesn’t listen to or read a word.  Brett thinks it’s because the meeting went south; Mason doesn’t ask questions, just makes a pot of coffee at eight at night.

“It’ll get better,” he says, rubbing Liam’s shoulder.

Later, after Mason leaves for his bartending job and Liam is alone in the apartment, he picks up his cell and calls Scott to tell him of his safe return home.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hozier's "Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene"
> 
> Some additional information here can be found [here](http://tw-fallharvest.livejournal.com/39425.html?thread=173569#t173569) at Kendall's LJ sign-up, mostly stuff about the way werewolves age.


End file.
